Did the Bureau of Ships expect a new hull classification for the Mission Essential Unit (MEU)/CG VSTOL since the concept painting starts with 1? What might be the new hull classification? Landing Fire Support (LFS)? Sea Control Ship (SCS)? Or if it had been build would it have been added to the cruisers list as a CGH-xx?

You know, I wonder if one thing that killed this concept and some others involving integral V/STOL craft ws the improved networking ability of the modern military. A lot of the older concepts I read stressed the importance of having organic air power to help target missiles-- but that's not really needed today since you can easily "hand off" such chores to someone else.

Since there's talk of building smaller carriers I wonder if this will get a second look.

I don't think there's any real interest in smaller carriers among the USN planners or leadership. There certainly is no budget to develop a new and very complex hybrid class like this right now. The USN needs to get its hands around the frigate/small combatant issue and the cruiser replacement/missile defense shooter missions first. Carriers are pretty much a solved problem right now.

There's also another issue-- drone technology is advancing so quickly, that you could very likely start a ship now and then see it become more or less obsolete. So I think smaller aviation capable ships will probably be atl least partially delayed by a desire to see how maturing UAV technology is going to impact them (My belief is that a futgure version of the MEU would be a ship with aviation support, but mostly for drones, rather than manned aircraft, save helo's or V-22 style craft. Barring a dramatic change in technology, the sweet spot for a full carrier seems to be about what the US has, and smaller fleets accept smaller ships, not because they're the best, but because of budget/mission reasons.)